STEM is much harder to learn and get less paid so understandable most students don;t want to study STEM. Meanwhile most people don;t need to know lot of them, so i think it's OK if less people study STEM, but STEM people should get better paid for their work.
I don't think most people need to learn physics. Chemistry is more widely used than physics. Not knowing how to solve problems in physics doesn't affect long time performance. Basically you can still be in STEM without knowing physics.